Donald Trump meets the Iron law of anti-incumbency

The American system of government is famed for its checks and balances. On November 3, Americans will elect all 435 members of the House of Representatives and about a third of the 100 senators. If the pattern of the past three decades holds, voters will again use the midterms to check a president two years into his term.

Many democracies call this anti-incumbency. In the United States, it has become something close to an iron law, and Donald Trump appears poised to become its latest victim for the second time.

Consider the Clinton presidency. Every president since Bill Clinton has entered office with his party controlling both chambers of Congress. Clinton lost both in his first midterm in 1994, surrendering the House after 40 years of uninterrupted Democratic control. Barack Obama, Trump in his first term, and Joe Biden each lost the House within two years of taking office.

The swings have accelerated. Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama each served two full terms. Trump's first term, which ended in January 2021, marked the first single-term presidency since George H. W. Bush's defeat by Clinton in 1992. Biden, weakened by concerns about his health, also served a single term. In the last two transitions, a party seemingly headed for years in opposition has returned to power within four years.

If current polling holds and Democrats retake Congress next month, they will enter the 2028 presidential race with momentum. Trump's second term could end as his first did, with the opposition reclaiming the White House after four years.

The Senate result will also help shape the third coequal branch of the federal government: the Supreme Court. Justices serve for life, and the Court was long considered the most stable branch of government. Life tenure largely insulates it from electoral swings, making every vacancy a high-stakes partisan contest.

Yet the Court has undergone considerable turnover over the past decade. After Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, the Republican-controlled Senate refused to consider Obama's nominee for the remainder of the year. Since then, four of the nine seats have changed hands, with new justices confirmed in 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2022.

Speculation this year has focused on the Court's two oldest members, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. Alito has said he intends to serve at least another term. But any future vacancy would require Senate confirmation, and a Democratic-controlled Senate could delay an appointment until 2029. Revenge, as the saying goes, is best served cold.

The cost of this anti-incumbency has been a style of governance Americans have long warned other countries against. US officials routinely urge trading partners and aid recipients to maintain stable, predictable rules so investors and citizens can plan ahead. At home, Washington has struggled to follow its own advice.

The Paris Climate Agreement, US membership in the World Health Organization, and the Iran nuclear agreement have all fallen victim to abrupt reversals as successive administrations pull policy in opposite directions.

Democrats have drawn their own conclusions. Biden ran in 2020 promising to restore the civility and institutional norms that had defined Washington before Trump. Trump's return in 2025 convinced many Democrats that restoration alone would not bring voters back. The party needed new answers.

Two broad camps have emerged. The first, popular among centrists, champions the Abundance agenda, arguing that reducing regulation and litigation would unleash private investment and produce sustained economic growth comparable to that of the 1950s.

The second is a resurgent democratic socialist movement, which advocates greater public control over economic power and the means of production. Its most prominent victory so far was Zohran Mamdani's election as mayor of New York City last year. The camps disagree sharply over the state's role in the economy. Both, however, believe the Obama-Biden model of unabashed centrism needs rethinking.

The election also comes at a difficult time for Muslim Americans. The wars in Gaza and Iran have coincided with rising anti-Muslim sentiment, which many in the community compare to the years after 9/11. Republican politicians have sought to turn that sentiment into electoral advantage. Some are also positioning themselves for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, when the term-limited Trump will no longer be eligible to run.

In late 2025, the governors of Texas and Florida designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country's largest Muslim civil rights organization, as a terrorist organization. Unlike Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, these governors may be seeking a route to the 2028 nomination without tying themselves too closely to an increasingly unpopular Trump administration.

The Muslim community's response recalls the post-9/11 years, when many Muslim Americans who had previously avoided public life began organizing, registering voters, and running for office. A similar shift, potentially on a larger scale, is underway.

Mamdani's victory in New York made him the first Muslim to lead America's most prominent city. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed is one election victory away from becoming the first Muslim to serve in the United States Senate.

The midterms appear likely to reinforce America's entrenched pattern of anti-incumbency. If Democrats secure a broad victory, they will have four years to work out how to avoid the same fate.

The election will also offer an early indication of the party's direction: whether the Abundance agenda, democratic socialism, or some combination of the two can persuade Americans to keep a party in power for more than one term.

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Ehteshamul Haque is a lawyer specializing in technology transactions. He teaches corporate law at American University.